Cognitive neuroscience

About

Researchers in the Mattingley laboratory seek to understand the roles played by selective attention, prediction and decision making in regulating perceptual, cognitive and motor functions in the human brain, in health and disease.

Work currently being undertaken in the laboratory is directed toward understanding how people use attention to prioritise information, whether from the sensory world or from internal thought processes. The group is also investigating how the brain employs predictive mechanisms to anticipate and effectively respond to expected and surprising events, and how the perceptual system optimizes decisions under uncertainty.

A particularly important part of the research involves understanding how perceptual and cognitive processes can be impaired in brain disorders such as stroke, dementia and attention deficit disorder. The Mattingley group employs a range of approaches to investigate these questions, including psychophysical measures of behavior, neuroimaging using EEG and fMRI, and brain stimulation methods including focal magnetic and electrical stimulation.

The group also investigates the effects of cognitive training on perception and cognition with the aim of harnessing new discoveries in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience to enhance learning outcomes in children, adolescents and older adults.

Reuter, Eva-Maria, Cunnington, Ross, Mattingley, Jason B., Riek, Stephan and Carroll, Timothy (2016) Feedforward compensation for novel dynamics depends on force field orientation but is similar for the left and right arms. Journal of Neurophysiology, 116 5: 2260-2271. doi:10.1152/jn.00425.2016

Jacoby, Oscar, Kamke, Marc R. and Mattingley, Jason B. (2013) Is the whole really more than the sum of its parts? Estimates of average size and orientation are susceptible to object substitution masking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 439 1: 233-244. doi:10.1037/a0028762

Mattingley, Jason B. (2009) Attention, automaticity, and awareness in synesthesia. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156 The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience 2009: 141-167. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04422.x

Pisella, L, Berberovic, N and Mattingley, JB (2004) Impaired working memory for location but not for colour or shape in visual neglect: A comparison of parietal and non-parietal lesions. Cortex, 40 2: 379-390. doi:10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70132-1

New research from The University of Queensland has shown for the first time that visual hallucinations in people with macular degeneration are associated with abnormally heightened activity in the visual cortex of the brain.

Paying attention to a location helps the brain to process not just what you can see there, but also what you can’t – suggesting that attention and awareness are controlled by different pathways in the brain.